"I must submit to your notice," he said, "that the name 'maiden' is common enough, and not nearly so refined as 'hand-rammer,' or 'stamper,' which latter has also been proposed, and through which you would be introduced into the category of seals; and only think of the great stamp of state, which impresses the royal seal that gives effect to the laws!
— from Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen by H. C. (Hans Christian) Andersen

Induced to take particular notice of the housekeeper, both by her own striking appearance and by Wemmick's preparation, I observed that whenever she was in the room she kept her eyes attentively on my guardian, and that she would remove her hands from any dish she put before him, hesitatingly, as if she dreaded his calling her back, and wanted him to speak when she was nigh, if he had anything to say.
— from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

In the provinces where so many heavy sentences were imposed, the real situation was that a state of war existed, and the judges believed, and I think correctly, that they were practically a military commission of one, and much more able to give a prisoner a square deal, tempering justice with mercy, than officers briefly gathered from the scenes of the fighting to act as a military commission.
— from The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912 by James H. (James Henderson) Blount

The most familiar type of irregular periodical in the Spanish-speaking world is the revolutionary sheet (to-day usually anarchistic) which is driven to the announcement "Aparece cuando puede" by the double pressure of poverty and governmental hostility.
— from Doña Perfecta by Benito Pérez Galdós

She was surprised to find the cottage-door standing open, and when she went into the room, she had such a strange feeling that she said to herself: ‘Oh dear!
— from Grimms' Fairy Tales by Wilhelm Grimm

Indeed, few completed the course of which I have spoken without issuing therefrom reliable, seasoned fighters who could keep their heads in the most embarrassing of official positions, and at times when older and wiser men, distracted with the annoyances of life, had either abandoned everything or, grown slack and indifferent, had surrendered to the bribe-takers and the rascals.
— from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol

[77] No other trial can, in the same way, show what is the real strength and weakness of a nation, what it is , not merely materially, but physically, intellectually and morally.
— from Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay by Immanuel Kant

"I am a citizen of the world, and I have met, in my time, with so many different sorts of virtue, that I am puzzled, in my old age, to say which is the right sort and which is the wrong.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

She was surprised to find the cottage-door standing open, and when she went into the room, she had such a strange feeling that she said to herself, "Oh dear!
— from Household Tales by Brothers Grimm by Wilhelm Grimm

Poliziano approved of his friend’s poetical attempts, and admired his commentary on Benivieni’s canzone on Platonic love, which the school of Florentine literature reckons among its most important works, more than his deeper studies, when in the rustic solitude of Querceto he wrote an extensive treatise against astrology, destined to form part of a great polemical work on sects hostile to Christianity.
— from Lorenzo de' Medici, the Magnificent (vol. 2 of 2) by Alfred von Reumont

When she went into the room she found Howell lying on the floor, burrowing his head into the dog's side for a pillow.
— from The Little Colonel's Hero by Annie F. (Annie Fellows) Johnston

She walked into the room, shook hands with Thompson, flung her coat, hat, and furs across a chair, and drew another up to the crackling fire.
— from Burned Bridges by Bertrand W. Sinclair

It was called "sag," which is the reverse spelling of "gas.
— from America's War for Humanity by Thomas Herbert Russell

It was a picturesque party that now enfiladed into the wide stretch of sand which in the rainy season forms the bed of the river.
— from An Australian in China Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma by George Ernest Morrison

But Arthur Young says that the smaller tenantry were found to be the most punctual rent-payers; and he further observes, “that at the last extremity it is the occupier’s stock which is the real security of the landlord,—it is that he distrains, and finds abundantly more valuable than the laced hat hounds and pistols of the gentleman jobber, from whom he is more likely in such a case to receive a ‘ message ’ than a remittance.”
— from A history of the Irish poor law, in connexion with the condition of the people by Nicholls, George, Sir

" The General had followed Milly up; she whisked into the room, showering me with congratulations on my success at the dance, she claimed me for a dinner, a concert—half a dozen engagements.
— from The Bacillus of Beauty: A Romance of To-day by Harriet Stark

Our school work in this respect seems to me to be most ridiculously and palpably superficial.
— from Over Prairie Trails by Frederick Philip Grove